For Whom The Bell Tolls
1954 Nobel Prize in Literature
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
RG Gold Medal 1999
28th September 1999 at Max's House
Synopsis
High in the pine forests of the Spanish Sierra, a guerilla
band operating behind the lines of Franco's army prepares
to blow up a vital bridge. Robert Jordan, a young American
volunteer, has been sent from the Republic to handle the dynamiting.
In the mountains he finds the dangers and the intense comradeship
of war - and he discovers Maria, a young woman who has escaped
from Franco's rebels...
First lines
He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of
the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead
the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees. The mountainside
sloped gently where he lay; but below it was steep and he
could see the dark of the oiled road winding through the pass.
There was a stream alongside the road and far down the pass
he saw a mill beside the stream and the falling water of the
dam, white in the summer sunlight.
Published reviews
The best book Hemingway has written.
New York Times
One of the greatest novels which our troubled age will produce.
The Observer
The best fictional report on the Spanish Civil War that
we possess.
Anthony Burgess
He is one of those who, honestly and undauntedly, reproduces
the genuine features of the hard countenance of the age.
Nobel Prize Citation
Our comments
I don't think any of us expected to enjoy or admire this book
as much as we did. There is no doubting that it is a masterpiece.
Hemingway's ability to sustain the plot is superb, maintaining
suspense and interest in the three day long story of a guerilla
attack. Much of the story is taken up with waiting - Robert
Jordan gets to know this band of guerillas and falls in love.
As he comes to know the characters of Pablo, Pilar, Anselmo
and the rest, so do we. Some of these characters stand out
so strongly: Pilar, the old woman leading the band with such
strength of character; Pablo, the disillusioned drunk with
a strong survival instinct.
The language is, as everyone always says, deceptively simple.
In speech, Hemingway recreates the Spanish in English, which
seems clumsy at first but once you become accustomed is somehow
more powerful than if he used idiomatic English. And in places,
when describing emotions, thought processes or pain, his language
runs off into streams of consciousness, reminiscent of Faulkner.
Particular passages come to mind as outstanding - Pilar's
telling of the overthrow of Fascists in the town, the massacre
of El Sordo, the final assault on the bridge.
This is a meaty book about big ideas - it deals with life,
death, love and comradeship. Hemingway is clearly writing
from some knowledge of both Spain and the Spanish Civil War
and this imbues the book with an undoubted authenticity. His
cynicism over the involvement of outside parties in the war
and his ability to present both the guerillas and the Fascists
they are fighting as ordinary men, give this book a political
edge rendered the more powerful because of the historical
setting of the novel and our own knowledge of the aftermath.
It is far too easy to caricature Hemingway as the macho
huntin' shootin' fishin' novelist - and we were definitely
expecting that. We were wrong - this is a great book by a
great novelist. Read it.
Related resources
Nobel
Prize Citation 1954
Biography
on Pegasos site
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